xiii, 285 pages ; 24 cm

"Law and Colonial Cultures advances a new perspective in world history, arguing that cultural practice and institutions - not just the global economy - shaped colonial rule and the international order. The book examines the shift from the multicentric law of early modern empires to the state-centered law of high colonialism. In the early modern world, the special legal status of cultural and religious minorities provided institutional continuity across empires. Colonial and post-colonial states developed in the nineteenth century in part as a response to conflicts over the legal status of indigenous subjects and cultural others. The book analyzes these processes by juxtaposing discussion of broad institutional change with micro-studies of selected legal cases."--Jacket

Includes bibliographical references (pages 267-282) and index

Legal regimes and colonial cultures -- Law in diaspora: the legal regime of the Atlantic world -- Order out of trouble: jurisdictional tensions in Catholic and Islamic empires -- A place for the state: legal pluralism as a colonial project in Bengal and West Africa -- Subjects and witnesses: cultural and legal hierarchies i the Cape Colony and New South Wales -- Constructing sovereignty: extraterritoriality in the Oriental Republic of Uruguay -- Culture and the rule(s) of law

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